MENTAL health seems to be featuring more and more in the media and on television, but can this really contribute to tackling stigma and discrimination?

MENTAL health seems to be featuring more and more in the media and on television, but can this really contribute to tackling stigma and discrimination?

EastEnders’ current storyline featuring Stacey Slater’s struggle to come to terms with a possible bipolar diagnosis is part of the BBC’s Headroom campaign, which aims to encourage people to look after their mental wellbeing.

Other programmes include the recent Terry Pratchett series on living with Alzheimer’s and an up-coming documentary on self-injury to be presented by Meera Syal.

It’s not just the BBC either – the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks currently features one young character, Newt, who has a schizophrenia diagnosis and another, Hannah, living with an eating disorder.

How people with experience of mental ill health feel about these portrayals varies. For every person who watched the How Mad are You? series and thought the whole concept of trying to guess who has or hasn’t got a diagnosis of mental ill-health was barbaric, another sang its praises for revealing just how difficult it was to tell.

I’m not sure about this kind of voyeuristic TV myself, but what I do find heartening is when the media – often guilty of sensationalism and negative portrayals of mental illness – plays a more positive role by portraying people struggling with, but managing, their mental health.

For characters such as Jean Slater, in EastEnders (who also has bipolar disorder) and Newt in Hollyoaks, their mental illness is no longer a storyline, but a part of who they are – it will always be there but will not always affect their day-to-day lives.

I believe that this kind of portrayal does help to challenge stigma, and can also help people experiencing mental illness connect with what is happening to them and seek help.

Another example of how the media can challenge stereotypes is the increasing trend for celebrities to come forward and discuss their experiences of mental distress.

The Time to Change anti-stigma campaign in England has done this particularly well with Ruby Wax, Stephen Fry and Alastair Campbell acting as media spokespeople. By sharing their stories they can help challenge discrimination and hopefully encourage people to talk more openly about how they’re feeling and seek help when they first begin to become unwell.

These high-achieving celebrities can also act as role models to those in mental distress – proof that it needn’t be a barrier to achievement or fulfilment.

It is easy for programme makers to turn a mental health diagnosis into a dramatic storyline. While I wouldn’t deny that fictional and non-fictional portrayals of sectioning, violence and mental health wards can also help challenge stigma, or be powerful campaigning tools that highlight failures in the system, I would like to see more reflection of mental ill health as part of the everyday diversity that exists in society.

Just like race or sexuality, it is a part of who we are, and needs to be recognised as such.

Many experts now feel that we are close to a tipping point in public attitudes towards mental illness but for now the stigma and discrimination people encounter is still very real.

It is down to all of us to challenge the way we think about, talk about and respond to mental ill-health – it is the only way that, slowly but surely, we can achieve social change.

Ewan Hilton is the executive director of mental health charity Gofal Cymru. To contact him e-mailreply@gofalcymru.org.uk

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